The present invention relates to a heat bonding apparatus for manufacturing an ink-jet printhead, and in particular, to an apparatus for heat bonding an IC chip and a flexible circuit tape of an ink-jet printhead in such a way that the efficiency and yield of heat bonding IC chips and the flexible circuit tapes are improved over the prior art.
In the manufacturing process of a conventional ink-jet printing apparatus, the ink-jet printhead is mounted on the printing apparatus and then the ink-jet printhead is combined with an ink cartridge so that the ink-jet printhead can eject the ink from the ink cartridge. In the manufacturing process of another conventional ink-jet printing apparatus, the ink-jet printhead is mounted on an ink cartridge first and then the cartridge is mounted on the printing apparatus.
A conventional ink-jet printhead usually includes: an IC chip formed with a plurality of ink chambers and in each of the ink chambers is provided an ejecting device of heating element type or piezoelectric type; a flexible circuit tape formed with an ink orifice in alignment with each of the ink chambers of the IC chip in such a way that the ejecting device can eject the ink from the ink chamber via the ink orifice for printing. The flexible circuit tape transmits signals from the printing apparatus to the IC chip of the ink-jet printhead to control the printing operation of the ink-jet printhead.
Specifically, in the manufacturing process of a conventional ink-jet printhead, each ink chamber in the IC chip has to be in precision alignment with a corresponding ink orifice in the flexible circuit tape before bonding the flexible circuit tape and the IC chip by a heat bonding apparatus. Neverthess, in general heat bonding apparatus, a flat bonding head is used to press a flexible circuit tape onto an IC chip. After bonding between two flat surfaces, residual bubbles are often left in between the flexible circuit tape and the IC chip. The bubbles can make it impossible to efficiently achieve precision alignment between each of the ink orifices of the flexible circuit tape and the corresponding ink chamber of the IC chip. This adversely affects the manufacturing efficiency and yield of the ink-jet printhead.
It is accordingly an object of the invention to provide a heat bonding apparatus for manufacturing an ink-jet printhead whereby the IC chip of the ink-jet printhead can fully contact the flexible circuit tape and there is no bubble left between the IC chip and the flexible circuit tape so that each ink orifice in the flexible circuit tape is in pricision alignment with the corresponding ink chamber in the IC chip.
Another object of the invention is to provide a heat bonding apparatus for manufacturing an ink-jet printhead whereby the heat bonding head exerts a substantially uniform pressure on the the flexible circuit tape to bond it onto the IC chip of the ink-jet printhead.
To achieve the above objects, a heat bonding apparatus for manufacturing an ink-jet printhead of the invention is provided. A flexible circuit tape is heat-bonded onto an IC chip of an ink-jet printhead by the heat bonding apparatus so that a signal from the printing apparatus can be transmitted to the IC chip of the ink-jet printhead to control the ink-jet printing operation. The heat bonding apparatus comprises a head seat; a heat bonding head seated in the head seat, the heat bonding head being movable along with the head seat to carry out an arc-shaped heat bonding process; and a heat bonding sheet and in the form of an elastic metal sheet. The heat bonding sheet is deformable under pressure and one end of the heat bonding sheet is secured to the heat bonding head so that when the heat bonding sheet is pressed for heat bonding the flexible circuit tape and the IC chip, the heat bonding sheet undergoes deformation and in the mean time pushes the air away from between the flexible circuit tape and the IC chip to let them fully contact each other. Thereby, each of the ink orifices in the flexible circuit tape 10 can be in precision alignment with the corresponding ink chamber in the IC chip. Thus, the efficiency and yield of manufacturing ink-jet printheads can be improved.